Regrets

Another small problem with "Coal Miner's Daughter," the video Sen. Beverly Perdue's been showing in her campaign for lieutenant governor in the Democratic primary: The coal miner pictured in it isn't actually her father.

In "Mine Owner's Daughter" (March 29), we questioned Perdue's telling audiences that she grew up "real poor," and also her statement in the video that "we never knew we were poor," since her father became a mine owner during her childhood and retired a multimillionaire when she was 22. What we didn't think to question was whether the fellow shown covered with coal dust when Perdue says, "my daddy was a coal miner," really was her father, Alfred Moore.

No sooner had the story run--with that photo, taken from the video--than we started hearing, from Perdue detractors, that it wasn't Moore at all. Shortly, a note came from Perdue's press secretary, Cecil Cahoon, clipped to a picture of two working men--Moore and this other fellow. "In the production of the video," Cahoon's note said, "the wrong person was used. The campaign did not remake the video because it conveyed the work Mr. Moore actually performed as a coal miner for a number of years." Other shots of Moore in the video, showing him in family settings, are him, Cahoon added. "